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Backup amp, a necessity?

#41
I play mostly in smaller bands with little to no FoH, except perhaps small PA for vocals. So yes, sometimes I carry an extra GK MB500 head in case my 26 year old Walter Woods head decides it' done. Also carry strings, batteries, tools, and band aids!
"Best" MacGyver I've had to do was when my 5-string Warwick D-string tuner snapped 15 minutes before the gig. I took off the B tuner and bass-ackwarded it into the D tuner hole and played 4 string for the gig. Thank you "leatherman" multitool!!!
 
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#42
jdh3000 said:
Our band uses subs, and I have a Di off my pedalboard. If my amp went down during a show, I could make it through the night with just the FOH sound.
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This. Also, one cover group I play in uses click and swell tracks all night, and there is actually a backup version of every instrument in the system. I could actually fall over dead and the gig could go on; they would just turn up the bass backup.

This comes up now and then and it's a personal decision. Me, I weigh the chances of equipment failure against the added weight/cost/hassle of carrying a spare anything. What I come up with is cables. Those are pretty much the only thing likely enough to fail that I bring spares. Everything else, just doesn't make sense for me. 30 years of gigging data.

Also, if I'm to be facetious a second - where does it end? Spare bass? Spare amp? Spare PA? 2 phones? Spare car in the garage in case yours doesn't start that night?
 
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#46
cableguy said:
I bring 2 basses to every gig as well as a GK MB200 as a backup amp. I ain't worried about needing a backup cab. I also have a separate DI in my bag if I need to run straight to FOH in a emergency.
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I bring 2 basses, and just my main amp, no backup. never have. BUT, we always have Full PA support, and I get a cab mic and a direct line through a DI box, so if my amp died, I could just have a lil more bass in my monitor, and get by. Wouldn't sound as full on stage, but the crowd doesn't care about the stage sound so much. ;)

If I didn't always go through the PA, I still wouldn't bring a backup..how often do heads actually fail during Live shows? (I don't Use a PF) :bag: :whistle: (oh no he dinnit- Yup, he did) lol. jk…. prolly.

;)

YMMV

T$
 
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#47
Had a spectacular (pop! bright flash! Smoke! lingering bad smell...) amp head fail at a big (state fair) show 40 years ago, was saved by the bassist from the band that followed us, who lent me his head.

My gigs almost never have FOH, our PA is only for vocals, and many of our gigs are an hour from home, so I carry a TE Elf or a Quilter Interbass, either of which gets the job done in grand style and take up almost no space in the kit bag.

Backup amps are cheap, tiny and can sound great, so no reason for me not to bring one. I also use a dual gigbag and there's always my $70 pawnshop Squire Jaq pj in the back compartment. I've done only two repairs on dark crowded stages during breaks in over 45 years of playing, and they were un-fun enough to make me bring a backup. Much easier to fix an output jack on a clean bench with good lighting:)

The bonus to this is it's fun to pull out the backup for a set just to remind yourself what they'll do. That Jaguar sounds great, and so do the Elf and Interbass.
 
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#50
I've always carried an extra amp head with me on a gig, and it has paid off on more than one occasion. In one situation where the power was bad I fried my amp head and a speaker so I had to rely on the PA monitor, which was way less than ideal...I usually don't carry an extra speaker cab, but here have been situation where I did. There is always FOH and monitors, but I don't like to do that because I'm never able to hear or feel my bass in that situation. Once I played an outside gig in a plaza in DC where I was required to run DI into FOH and have only a monitor feed for amplification and it sucked, IMHO. It was their way of keep the volume to a particular dB level since the plaza was in the middle of office buildings, Fed and non-Fed.
 
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#51
ShawnG said:
I’m still starting out, so no live playing with a band yet. But I am hoping that is in my future.
Do those of you that do gig (small bar/brewery-type venues, private parties, play at churches, etc., not touring bands) feel that a backup amp is a necessary piece of your “kit?”
I tend to be a “be prepared” kind of guy, so feel that if I have committed to play somewhere with a group, I should be committed to making sure I have the equipment with me to make that happen in the event a key piece of my equipment decides that night is the night to quit working. I see myself taking an extra bass, extra strings, etc. But are modern-day amps reliable to the point of not really needing a backup?
I currently have a Fender Stage 800 amp that I like. I’ve considered looking for a used Rumble V3 2x10 expansion cab (thinking that 800 watts through two 2x10s should suffice for almost any venue without PA support). Wouldn’t need to hook up the extra 2x10 if not needed. If I added a used Trace Elliott ELF, or something similar, to the package, that and the expansion cab could serve as a pretty nice backup. At used prices, an ELF and an extra Fender 2x10 aren’t cheap, but also not a huge financial commitment.
The fact that the Stage 800 is basically a computer driving the amp makes me think a backup would be a pretty good idea.
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Meh. Not really. Redundancy is great but haven't carried a spare amp in years. I've only ever fried one amp in my whole bass playing career and it was the practice amp in my bedroom.
 
#52
I have never used a backup amp in over 30 years of gigging. I’ve probably been lucky. I also tend to pick very reliable amps. Only once did I ever have an actual amp hardware failure and it was totally self-inflicted. At the time I was using a dual-amp biamped rig so I just ran full range that night—leading to the next two decades of doing so.

My experience is that everything else fails much more often: instrument cables, mic cables, speaker cables, power cables, etc and I always bring backups of those. I also bring a spare DI box or two and if something goes wrong with my rig I’ll just use that and run through the PA. These days I use a pedalboard straight to the PA so I don’t even bring an amp, but I still bring all the above spares.
 
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#53
#56
50+ years of playing gigs and have needed a back up amp only once.
and the one time my amp failed was due to physical mishandling of the amp and not the amp's fault. So I used a DI that night.

So no...I see no need for a backup amp unless you are touring full time.
 
#60
I gig frequently. I bring a cheap direct box in case something goes really bad. I've never had to use it. If I were seriously worried my gear might fail during a gig, I'd be buying different gear.

Don't bring backup basses either, unless I know someone is sitting in that night - they get my fretless with lines. Little unfair to throw them out into the mean world with an unlined board.

I bring backups of things that are likely to fail: cables. Never had one of those go bad during a gig either, but I've had to lend them to folks who didn't spend the money on high-grade cable.

I mean, do what you want. If you gotta bring a full PA as backup for your PA, because you're worried it's going to go bad, bring it. But you should be buying gear that's reliable.
 

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